RootsChat.Com
Some Special Interests => Travelling People => Topic started by: L12 on Thursday 03 April 08 22:51 BST (UK)
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Hello
Please forgive my asking but I had on a marriage certificate the occupation of 'Hawker' appear - I am not sure what this occupation is - the marr cert is 1838.
Can anybody help me?
Liz
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A hawker was basically someone who sells stuff I think.
A hawker was a job many travellers had but not all hawkers were travellers. What was your ancestors name it may help? :)
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The surname was Knibbs, and his address on the marriage certificate was the 'Greyhound Inn'.
It has made such a delightful change from seeing the ever present 'Ag Lab'!
Liz
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Hmm, I don't know of any Knibbs travellers but I have a couple of ancestors who were half-blooded with non-Romani fathers and non-Romani surnames but they lived as gypsies as was their mother's blood.
But just because I don't know of the name doesn't mean he wasn't a traveller, I am not an authority. :)
Is there any other information you can give us such as first name, age, location? Often being able to see him in context on a census can help.
I know what you mean about Ag Labs, I am beginning to form an irrational hatred for farm workers.
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Not all Hawkers were travellers. One of my non-romany gggt grandads was listed as a Hawker in 1841. By 1851 he was a postman!
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Not all Hawkers were travellers. One of my non-romany gggt grandads was listed as a Hawker in 1841. By 1851 he was a postman!
I agree, I have non-Romany circus workers as well. Occupations are rarely conclusive evidence of ethnicity.
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Thank you for your replies, I shall keep researching, it would be lovely to think I had traveller/romany genes somewhere, it would help me deal with the increasing need to go and dig the garden (far too many Ag Labs......)
L12
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I have a General Hawker ancestor, and I have been lead to believe that a Hawker was the equivalent of a door-to-door salesman, or possibly the more industrious ones would set up a cart somewhere to sell their wares.
As for Ag Labs, my tree is groaning with them. I was actually quite proud to find that one of my GGG-grandfathers was listed as a 'Scavenger'. I think he was the only ancestor with a proper trade! ;D
Glen
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A Hawker was a person licensed to sell goods using a horse to pull or carry the goods. If they were on foot only then they were Pedlars
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My grandmother had hawker as her occupation on her marriage certificate in 1910. I believe the family used to make several things including feather dusters, which were put on a small cart or barrow and sold going around the streets. I think that was how she met my grandfather.
In the 1901 census she is said to have been a paper bag maker. Different. Her father was a labourer at the docks.
On the other side of my family we have stable boys, grooms,
domestics and a shepherd. Marihelen
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Thank you for your replies, I shall keep researching, it would be lovely to think I had traveller/romany genes somewhere, it would help me deal with the increasing need to go and dig the garden (far too many Ag Labs......)
;D
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In Manchester ,on Piccadilly and Corporation Street there were small flat carts selling various things, greengrocery, flowers . They had their carts in the gutters and sold to passers by.
They were known as barrow boys but also hawkers although it sounds from earlier posts that was not the correct description of them.
Others had trays ,and sold haberdashery, toys razor blades etc but they were mostly on Oldham St.
Again hawkers as they did not have barrows..
To hawk means to carry goods about to sell,but the other meaning is to have a beast of burden
to enable someone to move about to sell their wares.
This means two controversial descriptions :P
Viktoria
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The surname was Knibbs, and his address on the marriage certificate was the 'Greyhound Inn'.
It has made such a delightful change from seeing the ever present 'Ag Lab'!
Liz
I would say that it made gypsies business legitimate. They had to have a licence or woukd be summonsed